My journey to the land of vegetables

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It’s a hazy Sunday (in my brain, not outside where it is actually quite lovely!) and I have just a minute to make three notes on my Whole30 journey.

1. I love my fridge. Not the actual mechanics of it – though they are are perfectly adequate – but the way it looks when I open it up. Immediately in my face are two huge plastic cartons of greens, and then a quick scan registers in my brain just produce, some meat, eggs, various leftovers and farm milk for my boys. It looks so happy and clear and devoid of the crap it used to house. I know it is not “perfect” by any stretch, but man it looks so much healthier than it used to look and that makes me feel great.

2. Maybe Whole30 was right about “paleo” breads and such. I don’t know. I still don’t buy into the reasoning behind avoiding certain foods merely because they make us think of other foods. If the actual ingredients are acceptable by Whole30 standards, then the food is automatically acceptable by yours truly. But last night I did make a paleo pizza crust for us – nothing but Whole30 ingredients – and I was soooo proud when we sat to eat. It tasted much better than the last attempt at “pizza” and felt like a treat even though it was perfectly within the bounds of the challenge. Totally worth the effort! But sure enough, today I am really paying a price. I can’t be 100% sure it’s the pizza that did me in, since it also had ground pork (which I’m not confident I have ever consumed before) and I did eat till I was VERY full. Plus, I passed out shortly after eating, rather than the couple of hours later that I was “supposed” to. But in my heart, I know somehow it was the pizza – maybe just too much almond meal in my body? I felt pretty crummy upon wakeup and so far today, at 1pm, the only food I have been able to choke down has been one single carrot – and that was just because I wanted to see if eating would make me feel any better. I’m going to have to really keep an eye on this stuff.

3. Women are ridiculous. Not me, of course! I just mean women in general and our obsession with weight. I saw my mother yesterday and the Whole30 challenge was not a surprise to her – I had seen her the week before and already explained the what/why/how. At the time, she had invisibly rolled her eyes and silently shot energy waves at me to get over myself and my “healthy eating.” Yet yesterday, she must’ve recognized a slight slimness in my frame and realized that Whole30 *could* be a way to drop a couple of pounds. I still maintain that I have lost next to nothing – *possibly* as much as 5lbs (though it really all depends on the minute I choose to step on the scale), but more likely 2-3lbs. Miniscule. I have noticed that my clothes fit a little looser and some dresses I ordered to try on for an upcoming celebration were all too big. So yes, I think I’ve slimmed a tiny bit. But nothing drastic by any measure. Yet, when my mother saw me and saw that I looked a little trimmer, she threw a backhanded compliment my way, “I love you, but, you’ve really lost too much weight. You are just too skinny.” This is NOT ACTUAL CONCERN. First of all, I am nowhere near the stick-and-bones anyone would be worried about. Second of all, when a woman says “You are too skinny” or “You’ve lost too much weight” what they really mean to say is, “Oh! You’ve slimmed down a bit! Something you are doing is working and I am jealous! I want to do it, too!” Sure enough, she kept up her “concern face” long enough to grill me about the specifics of our diet, what we are eating for meals, and how she might adopt changes. I guess that’s what I wanted back when I asked “Will the Weight Matter,” but really the whole thing is insane. If a guy said to another guy “Dude, you’ve lost too much weight” there would be no hidden compliment or agenda in there. He’d be expressing concern. If a woman says that, the recipient is supposed to glow with pride and thank the concerned citizen, followed by a declaration of just how wrong she is and how really, it’s nothing, I’ve actually gained weight and it’s disgusting how much I eat. Sigh.

I’m going to start writing this as a breakfast blog. Breakfast seems to be the hardest and most critical part of my day, and I still haven’t gotten it down. Part of the issue continues to be quantity/hunger, part is variety (of which there is little since I still fall into the “breakfast foods for breakfast” camp), part is timing. I’ve come to realize that it’s not just about what time I eat – it’s about what time I finish.

I did follow my own advice and tried this morning a “pack & go” type of breakfast. Some hardboiled eggs, a little bit of cold leftover bacon (still delicious!), a handful each of grapes and strawberries, and a ziplock of raw carrots with a little organic sunflower seed butter. PS Organic Sunbutter is not nearly as yummy as the sugared variety. Shock!

The eggs were hard to choke down, probably because they were cold/dry and probably because they were plain hardboiled eggs. Nothing sexy about that. Coffee helped. But after consuming those, the bacon and a few of each types of produce, I was feeling the blargs. I thought it would be valuable to eat more carrots, so over the next hour in the car I basically snacked those until the thought of another made me want to hurl. This is not a sustainable plan. Plus, since that made it 9am before I was finished, my 1pm lunch came too soon again.

So I shift my focus yet again. I think I need to worry less about portion and more about making something I actually want to eat. This is very challenging during a week of early camp, but I know if I haven’t gotten the hang of it by Friday, I should have a bit more time the mornings after that. And rather than worry about being too hungry for lunch (I was abiding hard & fast to the idea of waiting 4-5hrs between meals), I will embrace it. I’ll either be actually HUNGRY which has yet to happen on this nutritional journey (I would welcome it!) or — as if it were so bad! — I’ll add a little snack in there midmorning. Heck, my toddler snacks every 25minutes it seems, so I could just participate in one of those 🙂